LONG BEACH, Calif.  Teacher Bill Morgan walks into his third-grade class wearing a black Pilgrim hat made of construction paper and begins snatching up pencils, backpacks and glue sticks from his pupils. He tells them the items now belong to him because he "discovered" them.

The reaction is exactly what Morgan expects: The kids get angry and want their things back.

Morgan is among elementary school teachers who have ditched the traditional Thanksgiving lesson, in which children dress up like Indians and Pilgrims and act out a romanticized version of their first meetings.

He has replaced it with a more realistic look at the complex relationship between Indians and white settlers.

Morgan said he still wants his pupils at Cleveland Elementary School in San Francisco to celebrate Thanksgiving. But "what I am trying to portray is a different point of view."

Others see Morgan and teachers like him as too extreme.

"I think that is very sad," said Janice Shaw Crouse, a former college dean and public high school teacher and now a spokeswoman for Concerned Women for America, a conservative organization. "He is teaching his students to hate their country. That is a very distorted view of history, a distorted view of Thanksgiving."

Even American Indians are divided on how to approach a holiday that some believe symbolizes the start of a hostile takeover of their lands.

Chuck Narcho, a member of the Maricopa and Tohono O'odham tribes who works as a substitute teacher in Los Angeles, said younger children should not be burdened with all the gory details of American history.

"If you are going to teach, you need to keep it positive," he said. "They can learn about the truths when they grow up. Caring, sharing and giving  that is what was originally intended."

Liberals always treat Indians like they are some kind of peace-loving, tree-worshipping, combine-dwelling hippies. Shoot, they took each other's land all the time and then skinned the owners alive. The whole east coast was just one massacre after another until Smallpox came along.

4
posted on 11/22/2006 7:21:10 AM PST
by AppyPappy
(If you aren't part of the solution, there is good money to be made prolonging the problem.)

Before Indians were running casinos and selling cigarettes tax-free in North America, they were a stone-age people before the "pale face" came. They had not learned to domesticate animals (except dogs or lamas), they had no written language, they used only stone tools and they had not even yet invented the wheel.

They had never seen a horse, a metal knife, a cart or a plow.

They also commonly practiced slavery, genocide and cannibalism against other tribes. No matter how many times you watch "Dances with Wolves" and "Pocahontas," it will not change these facts.

In terms of population percentage loss, the worst war we ever fought was King Philip's War in 1675-76. King Philip was an indian chief (also known as Metacomet) who attacked to oust white settlers from New England. The Indians burned down/destroyed twelve of ninety Puritan towns and attacked forty others (including Providence). The Colonists' population was small in 1675 and a good percentage of that population was killed in the war (with about 1000 slain out of a population of 52,000, this death rate was nearly twice that of the Civil War and more than seven times that of World War II). The Indians lost the war.

The vast majority of Indians sided with the French in the French And Indian War (1753). The indians lost the war.

The vast majority of Indians sided with the British in the Revolution. The Indians lost the war. (think about that one for a while)

The vast majority of Indians sided with the British again in the War of 1812. The Indians lost the war.

As the Americans moved west, fighting was constant on both sides. The Indians lost every time.

The judgment of history is merciless.

6
posted on 11/22/2006 7:23:24 AM PST
by 2banana
(My common ground with terrorists - they want to die for islam and we want to kill them)

This lesson is appropriate for high school students, in my opinion, but not for younger students. I am not advocating returning the country to the Indians and I am happy that Anglo culture prevailed in North America. However, it is always good for us to be presented with both sides of any argument, and I believe it is appropriate for high school students to ponder the feelings of the Indians. After all, I believe that we are now experiencing the same invasion of our culture as the Indians did at that time.....different circumstances, but certainly the same feelings as we watch everything we love and value fade away.

Is Bill Morgan of European ancestry? If so, then he needs to practice what he preaches, and set an example and leave this country so the native peoples can have it back. If he feels that strongly about this, he's hypocritical if he stays and enjoys all that this country has to offer. On the other hand, maybe he lives on an Indian reservation and enjoys Indian casinos.

I am watching a show on the History channel right now about the Cherokee...even the existing Cherokee say they were fighters....and they killed for fun...they were very violent....NOT the peace loving peoples the lefties have made them to be....

I don't get this. He says he wants to portray a more "realistic" version of history. But he's really making his own value judgements about what that history should be. He's taking the position that the English settlers were wrong to come to America and settle this land. He's taking the position that the Indians were just peace loving people, living in harmony with nature. He's injecting a certain point of view into the story of Thanksgiving and the overall settlement of America by Europeans. He's not being "realistic" as such. He's taking sides and presenting a viewpoint that he agrees with.

>>>After all, I believe that we are now experiencing the same invasion of our culture as the Indians did at that time.....different circumstances, but certainly the same feelings as we watch everything we love and value fade away.>>>

Yes, and an absolute feeling of helplessness about it.

Good point.

20
posted on 11/22/2006 7:41:47 AM PST
by Southerngl
(When people fail to control themselves, they settle for controlling others.)

Disclaimer:
Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual
posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its
management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the
exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.